


the rest is silence

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [171]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Babies, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family Dynamics, Fights, Formenos, Gen, I miss Amrod, Maedhros is a good big brother, Set VERY early in the series...right after the current timeline events of fic no. 6, the Ambarussa regress whenever their parents fight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:42:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22012777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: The shouting downstairs, which had lulled, rises again. Maedhros does not hide his flinch this time, and turns towards the door.“The little ones?” Maglor asks, with a hitch in his throat.“Not so little anymore, except at times like these.” Maedhros pulls the strip of leather from his hair and lets it fall almost to his shoulders. “I’ll bring the twins to my room. They’ll sleep easier there.”“And you?”- call it the past (in hopes that we may leave it)
Relationships: Ambarussa & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fëanor | Curufinwë/Nerdanel
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [171]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	the rest is silence

Across the room, Amrod doesn’t look human. He is hunched over with his head between his knees, and he is doing what Mother said they should never do: setting his candleholder on his bed.

The glow from the flame sends tremendous shadows up and over his humpbacked shoulders.

 _Quasimodo_ , Amras nearly says, for it is one of his favorite insults—but words of all kinds stick in his throat. The open window is filtering in a crabapple breeze, the nightshirt in his arms is calico instead of flannel, but Amras still feels cold.

Amrod did not listen to Maglor tell the story of the bell-ringer of Notre Dame, anyway. Amrod wouldn’t understand.

Amras, still swallowing against the curious pain in his throat, strips off his trousers and his shirt and tugs the nightshirt on.

He wishes he had thought to hide his porcelain mug.

“Where are you going?” Amrod hisses, the candlelight tilting dangerously around him—

“To fetch my mug!”

“You can’t go downstairs!”

Likely the wax will ruin the quilt first, and then the fire: Amras imagines orange tongues lapping at the corners of their room, hungry even after the heart of the blaze has turned them both to twin skeletons of crumbling black ash.

“I can too,” he protests, though his voice trembles. They still have high baby voices, Curufin says. Still, and shamefully.

Amrod picks the candle up, so that it doesn’t ruin them all.

“You’re a stubborn cuss,” he snaps. “And you _can’t_.”

This isn’t fair. Amras _isn’t_ the unreasonable one, he is the one who is more likely to counsel caution. He dislikes how this, too, must make him seem like a baby—a coward—and so he sets his jaw and tiptoes towards the door.

It opens against Amrod’s indignant hiss, but not by Amras’s hand.

Maitimo has been home only two days. In that time, he has shown the twins that they are still small enough for him to lift both of them at once (“Couldn’t do that to two of _me_ ,” sniffed Curufin). He does not reach for them now, but his shoulders seem to fill the doorway—or maybe that is the blur in Amras’s eyes.

“Ambarussa,” Maitimo says. “I came to see…” he pauses. Uncertain? But no, Maitimo, even above the distant heartbreak of smashing dishes, can never be uncertain.

Amrod interrupts.

“Can we come into your room?”

“That is what I came to ask.” Maitimo tucks a lock of hair behind his ear, a swift smile darting out and disappearing. “I thought you might sleep easier, there.”

Amras swallows. The thought of his blue mug, with its fluted edge—bought especially for him by Grandfather Finwe—gives him another little pang, but he masters himself, and follows Maitimo down the hall.

Maitimo smells like horses, and himself. He turns back the quilt on his broad bed and the twins slip into it, mouse-like. Maitimo runs a hand over his face, and Amras keeps his mouth shut.

Amrod, of course, does not know to do the same.

“What will we do,” Amrod says, “If they do not agree?”

Amras plucks miserably at the buttons of his nightshirt. They are thirteen, and Maitimo seemed full a man when _he_ was that age. Amras, if he walks to Maitimo’s open window, will not see the trees and hills around them. He will instead be eye-to-eye with the black serpent of night.

Their only hope, their only safety, is in this house.

Maitimo does not undress, yet. He stands with his hands clasped loosely behind his back, his hair lifted a little by the cross-breeze. “There are those,” he says, carefully and at last, “Who express their love for each other even through the harshest words. Our parents are like that.”

Amras looks at Amrod, and because they are, in things both grand and aggravating, _one_ , he can see how his brother is disturbed.

Disturbed as he is disturbed.

Amrod snarls silently at him, and rolling over to face away, he says, “Amras is worried that they shall spoil his Finwe mug.”

Maitimo wheels about. “No!”

Amras feels betrayed, but it is too late to do anything about it. “Why not?” he asks, instead. By the moment, he feels younger.

One corner of Maitimo’s mouth hitches in a curious smile, as if it pulled by a needle and thread. He makes it look natural, after. “Because _mamaí_ does the breaking, and she will be particular with our favorite things.”

Amrod peeks over his shoulder. Amras glowers at him, and Amrod turns over again. They lie stiff and straight with their backs towards each other. Amras is looking at Maitimo, who is pouring water in the basin on his tri-legged stand. He washes his face, and he smooths a good deal of the water through his hair. His long hands cover half his face as he does so.

They are too old, Amras knows, in some secret part of his heart. Too old to constantly depend on a host of brothers to save them. But the dark is all around them, save for Maitimo’s candles. Amras does not want to let this go.

He knots his hands in the quilt.

Maitimo strips off the old vest of Athair’s, and the rag of a shirt beneath it. He washes his neck and under his arms, and where he can reach along his shoulderblades and spine. He reaches for a nightshirt and after he has tugged it on, Amras thinks he looks younger. Swallowed-up and tired.

There is a long pause before Maitimo pinches out the candle. When he has done so, he says, through the dark, “You needn’t be afraid. It will all come right in the end.”

“Will you fight with your wife?” Amrod asks, muffled into a pillow.

Amras hears Maitimo sigh.

“I am not much of a fighter,” he answers. “But you knew that, didn’t you?”

“You _could._ ” Amrod can be stubborn. “If it was the right thing to do.”

“You grow cleverer than I by the day,” Maitimo answers. He climbs into bed beside Amras, causing both twins to tumble over and over so that there is room enough.

Then Amrod gets out of the bed altogether.

Such a little weasel, Amras thinks. As bad as Curufin.

Maitimo asks no questions as Amrod pads around the foot of the bed. He merely shifts obligingly, so that Amrod can get in beside him.

Amras huffs his disgust under his breath. Not too loudly; there is some comfort in the fact that they are _both_ acting like babies tonight.

Downstairs, the shouting continues.

Amrod falls asleep first. Amras loses time, and himself second. He wakes at cool midnight and in the wee hours—or so he thinks by the light and the absence of light.

Each time, Amras finds that Maitimo has not moved.

Nor does he ever breathe like he is sleeping.


End file.
